Trade chat is a scam?!

[Zexal066]

As you have seen the title you can understand that this might be a difficult topic to discuss as many people trade chat every day and many use it to try and sell overpriced prime frames etc.

What really grinds my gears and got me to take the time and write in the forums for the first time is the scams that people try to pull off there. By that i mean many players try to buy mods, rivens and prime parts of mostly newbies that have no idea of the pricing that certain mods, rivens and primes.

I cannot count of the times i've seen people try and buy torid, ceramic, glaive etc. rivens at a fractions of the cost they have by saying '' wtb any of the previous mentioned rivens at 350,400,200 pl each'' or '' wtb sentient surge for 25pl, 50pl etc.'' to a new player that might have these mods or items without the knowledge of warframe market these platinum might sound to him as a great deal and that he could benefit a lot from selling it but the truth is he is getting the short end of the stick.

I can totally understand that the trade chat will never change and for people to continue to do the aforementioned they have some success getting them at these low prices this thing will never end but i want to ask why did DE never made a change to the trading ingame to make it close to the site we mostly use called warframe market so when a new players wants to buy something or sell he can go into an ingame tab and get a taste of the price range he can sell or buy his items so that he will not get scammed buy people like i mentioned above.

To conclude this rant i just wanted to express my disappointment and anger for this issue even if it goes to deaf ears i can know that i at least talked about it instead of just letting it pass like nothing happened.   

 

TLDR: Mans get mad about trade chat and starts yapping about it.

[Aldain]

Yeah, more or less it probably is.

That's why a lot of people use that Warframe Market site instead, hell I've had better experiences going all "Farmer's Market" at Maroo's Bazaar than trying to deal with the Trade Chat these days.

...But I still hold that's because they put both Riven trading and General trading into the same chat which creates this excessive reliance on filters to not see endless amounts of garbage offers flood the chat. They really should make a separate chat exclusively for Riven Mods since it makes up around 80% of the traffic these days.

[BowserNC]

Warframe market is a free market to be honest. This basically means that players can ask for any prices they want for their items, and other players can choose to either or not to accept their offers. There is no fixed price for any item, and the value of an item depends on the supply and demand of the market.

However, some players may try to take advantage of this system by asking for unreasonable prices for their items. For example, I saw some players on the warframe.market site asking for hundreds of platinum for a mod that is worth only 3 platinum. This is not fair to other players who are looking for a fair trade, and it may also discourage new players from joining the market, by calling everything pay to win (I've seen multiple cases like this)

I think that warframe market should have some guidelines or rules to prevent this kind of price gouging. Perhaps there should be a limit on how much platinum a player can ask for an item, or perhaps a way to report those players who are asking for outrageous prices. This would make the market more balanced and enjoyable for everyone ngl.

[Aldain]

6 minutes ago, BowserNC said:

Warframe market is a free market to be honest. This basically means that players can ask for any prices they want for their items, and other players can choose to either or not to accept their offers. There is no fixed price for any item, and the value of an item depends on the supply and demand of the market.

However, some players may try to take advantage of this system by asking for unreasonable prices for their items. For example, I saw some players on the warframe.market site asking for hundreds of platinum for a mod that is worth only 3 platinum. This is not fair to other players who are looking for a fair trade, and it may also discourage new players from joining the market, by calling everything pay to win (I've seen multiple cases like this)

I think that warframe market should have some guidelines or rules to prevent this kind of price gouging. Perhaps there should be a limit on how much platinum a player can ask for an item, or perhaps a way to report those players who are asking for outrageous prices. This would make the market more balanced and enjoyable for everyone ngl.

Some players might ask for unreasonable amounts of platinum for stupid things, but that's the advantage of a free market, unreasonable sellers are often severely undercut by more rational sellers, that and because the postings aren't automatic buy/sell on a click and require two people to be active in their trading it prevents people from generating a monopoly by buying out their competition so only their absurd prices remain.

...Now if only people would actually remember to take themselves offline when they're not in game because I swear every time I've gone to buy something I've had to go through 3-4 people who are listed "Online in game" when they actually aren't.

Edited March 9 by Aldain

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

Unless people in trade chat are doing deceptive trades( like selling a prime chassis and swapping for systems since it's similar to fool someone not paying attention) then it's not a scam.

Even that one guy that sold Ignis wraith never did anything wrong, it's definitely something that can be seen a scummy but people are free to sell any item for any price.

It's a free market so haggling for lower prices when buying or asking for more than what's usually sold for when selling isn't a scam.

[MaxTunnerX]

44 minutes ago, Zexal066 said:

As you have seen the title you can understand that this might be a difficult topic to discuss as many people trade chat every day and many use it to try and sell overpriced prime frames etc.

What really grinds my gears and got me to take the time and write in the forums for the first time is the scams that people try to pull off there. By that i mean many players try to buy mods, rivens and prime parts of mostly newbies that have no idea of the pricing that certain mods, rivens and primes.

I cannot count of the times i've seen people try and buy torid, ceramic, glaive etc. rivens at a fractions of the cost they have by saying '' wtb any of the previous mentioned rivens at 350,400,200 pl each'' or '' wtb sentient surge for 25pl, 50pl etc.'' to a new player that might have these mods or items without the knowledge of warframe market these platinum might sound to him as a great deal and that he could benefit a lot from selling it but the truth is he is getting the short end of the stick.

I can totally understand that the trade chat will never change and for people to continue to do the aforementioned they have some success getting them at these low prices this thing will never end but i want to ask why did DE never made a change to the trading ingame to make it close to the site we mostly use called warframe market so when a new players wants to buy something or sell he can go into an ingame tab and get a taste of the price range he can sell or buy his items so that he will not get scammed buy people like i mentioned above.

To conclude this rant i just wanted to express my disappointment and anger for this issue even if it goes to deaf ears i can know that i at least talked about it instead of just letting it pass like nothing happened.   

 

TLDR: Mans get mad about trade chat and starts yapping about it.

There is one very good and easy solution. Actual in-game market, which you can easily see BEFORE you get to trade chat. Warframe market is a 3rd party site that game doesnt tell you about and only people who know about it are there, which makes all the others go to trade chat. If there was a legitimate warframe market in the game, you could easily see the price and thus would not have trade chat problems. But of course, humans are humans and they will try to scam you regardless of where. Even now on WF market some prices are scammy, dont forget that, But the intensity and quantity of the scams are both decreased by the info about other prices. And its this price info that needs to get to players.

Edited March 9 by MaxTunnerX

[Kronxito]

I always use warframe market. 

Reach the player in game. Price is already set. We do the trade. And bye. 

Simple. Clean. Secure. 

I never ever had any issue with trading. Maybe im just lucky. 

[RichardKam]

Scam? No. Unreasonable price? Maybe.

Free market depends on the availability of information between buyer and seller. While some, or most, items in the trade chat are unreasonably priced, it is the buyer/seller responsibilities to decide what offers are acceptable or not, based on the information available eg warframe market, other trade chat offer, etc. Afterall, no one is forcing anyone to sell/buy at any specific price, and no one is obliged to trade with anyone.

Riven, on the other hand, is a bit controversial because everyone is the sole provider of their own unique riven and therefore can corner a market. Unless you can pinpoint two identical rivens on the market, otherwise it is almost impossible to accurately valuate a riven.

[Raikh]

The people that regularly spend time in Trade Chat are just there to buy cheap and sell high or because they need some plat asap. Warframe Market has become popular enough where day to day market price trading has shifted away from Trade Chat in large parts. The Trade Chat Pasta spammers were always there but now they are among the few left that have the incentive to stay there instead of selling and buying via Warframe Market.

I personally jump in occasionally if I try to find something a little cheaper than on Warframe Market. Not outrageously cheaper like looking for a Torid Riven for 100-300p when they easily sell for 700p+ on a regular basis on Warframe Market, as thats just scummy. But I can usually find someone thats just looking for some quick plat that will happily sell me an item for 20-30% below market price.

A few years back I had a bunch of fun scouring trade chat for Rivens and haggling with people but more recently its been much more often people trying to sell "god rolls" for high 3 figures to 4 figures plat numbers and a good number of these Rivens aren't even good enough for that title nor that price. And I wouldn't go to trade chat for selling my stuff unless I'm fine with either gambling on finding the right buyer and investing a lot of time for that or taking less plat than I could for a quick sale.

Edited March 9 by Raikh

[MaxTunnerX]

56 minutes ago, Kronxito said:

I always use warframe market. 

Reach the player in game. Price is already set. We do the trade. And bye. 

Simple. Clean. Secure. 

I never ever had any issue with trading. Maybe im just lucky. 

Youre not being lucky, youre using what most people are using, whereas the other people dont know WF market even exists so they get scammed to the bone.

55 minutes ago, RichardKam said:

Scam? No. Unreasonable price? Maybe.

No bro, its literally scam. You cant charge 1000x more on trade chat pretending to be a normal buyer or whisper people who have obviously made a typo. Like when I type WTS instead of WTB I get so many scammers in my whisper chat immediately, and I personally say "fck off" to each and every one of them whilst also clicking the ignore button. Thats what the friggin scammers deserve.

Edited March 9 by MaxTunnerX

[Berzerkules]

6 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Youre not being lucky, youre using what most people are using, whereas the other people dont know WF market even exists so they get scammed to the bone.

No bro, its literally scam. You cant charge 1000x more on trade chat pretending to be a normal buyer or whisper people who have obviously made a typo. Like when I type WTS instead of WTB I get so many scammers in my whisper chat immediately, and I personally say "fck off" to each and every one of them whilst also clicking the ignore button. Thats what the friggin scammers deserve.

IF both parties involved in a trade agree on a price and the buyer receives the item for that price it's not a scam. 

[MaxTunnerX]

7 minutes ago, Berzerkules said:

IF both parties involved in a trade agree on a price and the buyer receives the item for that price it's not a scam. 

Not everyone uses the same definition as you. In my country, a lot of activities are illegal, even when both parties agree on a price. For example loansharking. Either youre trying to manipulate someone into a shady deal, or you arent, and thats the difference. You know damn well that youre trying to rip people off when youre doing this, and thats what matters.

Edited March 9 by MaxTunnerX

[MutoManiac]

I have three big grocery stores within walking distance of my house. Some items are half price at one store and vice versa the next week according to the flyers. Does this mean I’m being scammed because the prices are different? 

[(XBOX)C11H22O11]

19 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Not everyone uses the same definition as you. In my country, a lot of activities are illegal, even when both parties agree on a price. For example loansharking. Either youre trying to manipulate someone into a shady deal, or you arent, and thats the difference. You know damn well that youre trying to rip people off when youre doing this, and thats what matters.

Uh no scams rely purely on deception, buying a hot dog for 5 bucks when you could've bought an identical one for 3 in another place isn't scamming while ordering a hot dog and getting a chicken wing is a scam since you didn't get the item you were willing to pay for.

If you want an item and you're willing to buy it for X amount it doesn't matter if there's cheaper options, it's on the buyer for not doing enough research.

[Berzerkules]

23 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Not everyone uses the same definition as you. In my country, a lot of activities are illegal, even when both parties agree on a price. For example loansharking. Either youre trying to manipulate someone into a shady deal, or you arent, and thats the difference. You know damn well that youre trying to rip people off when youre doing this, and thats what matters.

You can't just make up definitions of words, that's not how it works.

[MaxTunnerX]

1 minute ago, Berzerkules said:

You can't just make up definitions of words, that's not how it works.

This is how definitions always worked lmao. Someone said something and if enough people agreed, that definition became the standard. Literally everything you can see in a dictionary is what most people believe is right (and what they use), not what is objectively right. Not to mention several definitions of one thing can be true at once.

[(PSN)slightconfuzzled]

Sort of yeah, but its complicated. Though it can also be as "simple" as you want it to be, depends on how you want to frame it. Nothing happens in a vacuum though and different people have different expectations, priorities, perceptions and personal situations, and that natural variety and range in experiences, values and desires can add complexity. Not just within trade chat, and Warframe, but in broader economics in general. 

For example, we could take 100 people, and get them to decide on a value for a particular Warframe item. We could get them to come to a consensus on different price points so even if they don't agree exactly, we can sort of have a range. like lets say XYZ Mod, unranked. Their consensus is that 25 Plat to 50 Plat is a generally good and fair deal. Less than 25 plat is favourable to the person getting the mod, and 100 Plat to 50 Plat, favourable to the person selling, but not too outrageously unfair. If there is someone willing to pay that much. Then they agree that 101 Plat and above is starting to get unfair. So they also all naturally come to the consensus that selling it for 2000 Platinum is obviously silly, very unfair and not reasonable. However... in a free market, well, what if someone with 1 billion Plat wanted to buy that Mod for 2000 Platinum. Its their Plat, and if they want to buy it, why is that unreasonable? Also trade chat has more than 100 people, and coming to consensus isn't easy... so if you also have a minority of people who are really aggressively looking to generate more value for themselves, even at the potential negative experience of others... well, thats not necessarily not allowed... because if people don't agree, they can just not participate or be involved in the deal or transaction right? 

However... potentially what happens, is if a lot of those types of players, are in trade chat, constantly posting over and over "XYZ Mod selling for 2000 Plat" even if they are a minority, even if people think thats not good pricing, it can have a negative affect, because it can influence the perception of values, from people who may not be as savvy about values or perceptions around value. More neutral or uninformed individuals, may start to be influenced by perceptions, and still sell cheaper than 2000, but more than 100, because why not? Then if you have a certain type of player that is just relentlessly posting in chat over and over with a small minority also doing the same, it may create a type of congestion and spam, that more moderate and fair orientated (fair for me, fair for the other person), players will be discouraged and disincentivized to participate and seek out alternatives like say Warframe Market. Compare a more casual player who sincerely wants to trade "fairly" but only has around 15 minutes, if hypothetically, there are 10 players who want a more self motivating value situation, where they benefit more, and they have 4 hours to sit in trade chat. Then that as a ratio instead. Hypothetically you can create a situation where some types of players are discouraged from participating because they find the system unfair, and so perceptions skewer a certain direction. Like imagine hypothetically, you went to use trade chat and there were 300 people in it, but 299 of them, only wanted to trade Stropha Rivens... but you are there for literally anything else. 

Now there are some tools that exist to try and assist in this regard, like filters. Some of the problem can still exist though. Also to be super clear, most of my examples are silly on purpose, to just demonstrate how issues can arise. Not necessarily that its what is happening currently. You can have a small minority, potentially negatively influence a "free market", because of factors and limitations around say, a trade chat, versus a system with easier price evaluations, comparisons, records, and systems designed to assist new and uninformed players, help teach them about value and... none of this stuff is info people are born with, and its why with real money, there is a lot of money involved with education, learning and understanding all this in regards to finances. Obviously Warframe selling stuff isn't as important in the grand scheme of things, but a lot of similar principals can apply, as well as flaws, oversights, and why and how some may try to exploit it or engage in shady stuff to attempt to manipulate it.

However the other important thing to remember is that... "it functions decently as is", so they may not necessarily be an incentive to try and improve on it, make improvements or anything similar. The Youtube channel the Kengineer has a pretty good video on this very topic as well. Worth checking out. Despite some of my hypotheticals, I do actually find in practice, trade chat has a decent amount of "good faith", and "fair" value exchanges happening. Even some pleasant and charitable people participating. Also nothing necessarily wrong with some people wanting to get a good deal for themselves necessarily. Some people have more disposable income, and Plat, and some people have more time and patience, and so to one person what might seem unfair is actually two individuals with different values and ideas around value. The tricky bit is knowledge and discrepancies around player knowledge and understanding, so usually framed as newer players getting taken advantage of, as well as potential manipulations as discussed above, making trade chat a burden to try and navigate (hence the relative popularity of Warframe Market and also why some would like certain tools like an auction house). 

[ReddyDisco]

Arm yourself with knowledge so you don't become a fool, trade chat has always been a scam and will be.

[Vaml77]

If the market is "free" why consult a website like that? The prices there are abusive most of the time. You only buy things based on real economics, for example houses, cars, etc. Virtual game items for me don't need this exaggeration. There are people who want to sell prime parts for 100 platinum or more! Prime parts I sell each for 20-30 depending on the warframe or weapon. There are many opportunists in the chat trying to deceive people with prices on this site that never had any credibility. We are the ones who set the prices.

[Berzerkules]

12 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

This is how definitions always worked lmao. Someone said something and if enough people agreed, that definition became the standard. Literally everything you can see in a dictionary is what most people believe is right (and what they use), not what is objectively right. Not to mention several definitions of one thing can be true at once.

I get that language changes over time as words get misused and widely accepted. Take the word decimate for example, Literally means reduce by 1/10. It was a form of punishment for roman soldiers but now it's used as total destruction. 

In warframe there is no set price for anything except what DE has in the in game market. Any player can buy or sell any tradeable item for any price because it's a free market. Finding a buyer/seller that is willing to buy/sell an item for an agreed upon price is not a scam no matter how unreasonable anyone else thinks that price is. 

[johnno23]

trade chat has always had people asking daft prices but on occasion there are many players myself included that first check warframe market before posting a WTB or WTS.

As for new players getting scammed whatever I don't think it is a real issue as I on a regular basis point 5 or 6 players per gaming session to the market place and I am not alone in doing this.

I was in game as a noob several years ago and people already pointed me to the warframe market before i was even level 5 and when i had my very first riven other players in turned helped me to find the riven market site and how to work out if I had something good or bad etc.

anyways if players new or old get scammed on the trade tab then I ask myself did they even bother to ask in the help tab if the price was realistic ?

[AntifreezeUnder0]

To play into scam mentality, each plat you got from trade, you scammed DE from money you should have spent to obtain the said plat.

On serious note, as annoying it is scam is when you say , that you sell filled anasa, but try to give empty  on trade. 

Rest is not forced. If one wants to dedicate flipping things to gain profit, then do so, more time you spend in chats or 3rd party websites= less time grinding and looting!

Yea ripping people off is bad, but then again if both parties agreed on price then its on them.

Remove plat from trading equation, and you get free of scam trading, correct? 

 

 

[Tiltskillet]

Nice video on this, in that the creator tries to approach the question scientifically:

 

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

I will always be in favor of an in-game, searchable list of items for sale, that people can interact with and make purchases from, without the selling party present for the transaction.

The doom and gloom surrounding this system only seems to really exist around games like Path of Exile, Diablo, and now Warframe. I've been gaming for decades now, and in the vast majority of online games, they've had "auction houses" of some variety, some better than others, that have been more beneficial to the game than "trade chat" and 3rd party websites to facilitate transactions. Some systems have been less well designed, allowing for manipulation through Real Money Trading (though the problems were obvious, and ways to eliminate those issues existed.)

The best example of an "auction house" (a term most in these circles seem to hate with a passion, and is frought with misunderstanding and multiple forms, so I usually avoid using), was found in Final Fantasy 11 online. I played this from near the beginning of its life, for over a decade. They had some, in retrospect, minor issues with RMT for a while, but during that entire time, I was able to easily buy and sell the things I needed. "Big ticket" items were not out of my reach. I could still farm things to sell, and they sold quickly.

Some KEY features of the FF11 AH were:
* visible price history of completed transactions, and their dates/times.
* a limit on the number of items for sale from any given person at any time (you only sold what would make you the most money, to be worth one of your slots.)
* a time limit on listings, so you didn't list items for outrageous prices, or they'd automatically de-list themselves after a period.
* AH listing fees, so you had to pay a proportionate amount of money as a fee JUST TO LIST the item, based on the expected sale price (asking millions of gil (the in-game currency of the game) for an item would cost you thousands in tax just to list it). This contributed to keeping prices low, because if you asked too much, and your items never sold, you were still out your listing fee every single time, and you wasted your slot during that time.
* current asking prices for items on the AH were hidden. You had to rely on the price history to figure out how much you were going to "bid".
* the lowest bid that exceeded the asking price of the cheapest listing sold first. This did contribute to the phenomenon of some highly motivated people to list things for 1gil, rather than thousands, like the reasonable listings, just to sell theirs faster and be charged less listing tax, and hope that people "bid" at the price of other items in the recent price history. This left them open to being forced to sell the item for 1 gil... and people routinely sold items for just a few gil under the most recent listing, by 5-10 gil, just trying to beat out that lowest bid mechanic, and didn't really impact the overall real value of the items.

FF11 also had bazaars, similar to Maroo's bazaar... creating a personal shop, with prices listed next to each item. You had to leave your character idle, standing around, for people to find you and shop your bazaar... but this was open ANYWHERE you went. People generally didn't shop each other's bazaars out in the field, but they found certain high traffic areas near towns (outside of towns, because even in-town, there was a trade tax applied, even to bazaar sales).

In these shops, you could potentially list everything in your inventory. The game even had a search system, mainly used to form parties, as it was a heavily party based game where even leveling required a full team) but they had a category within this search that let you advertise items for sale, and where you'd be found. This is where most "Big Ticket" items would be bought and sold, bypassing the high fees associated with the automated auction house system. This system also allowed buying and selling of some items that weren't allowed to be listed on the AH, such as "ancient currencies" that were used in upgrading each class's "ultimate" weapons from the endgame activities like Dynamis.

 

There are some problems inherent in games with in-game currency-based auction houses, like inflation, which, to some extent did impact FF11, but as a player, I never had an issue with... some of these problems are not issues for Warframe, primarily because trade in Warframe is based around the premium platinum currency, rather than Creds. You can't farm platinum in the game, to increase the supply and devaluate it. Plat remains valuable because of its source (real money). Prices won't boom and bust around the value of Plat vs systems that work around in-game currencies.

With an in-game automated AH, people worry about bots buying things up cheap, and then selling higher... to do this, they'll require using the premium currency of the game, which must be bought from DE, or obtained in trade from other real players. In a system like described in FF11, real players are not incentivized to sell things super cheap, and platinum is valuable - it allows purchases from the cash shop that creds are of no use in. Prime Parts, which are likely the most commonly traded item, will retain value no matter what the AH is doing, because they have value in conversion into Ducats, which again, allow purchases in a shop where Cred alone is not enough.

 

I've gone into this in-depth, before. However, I think DE's primary reasons for not implementing an AH in Warframe is two-fold, and unrelated to anything above.
It would take resources to code and maintain this feature. And then the customer support tickets that would probably be higher than the hands-off approach they can take with trade chat. They've offloaded that responsibility to Waframe.Market, just like peer-to-peer play sessions offloaded to players, rather than having servers.

[Voltage]

Warframe.market and the in-game trade chat both have their positives and negatives for both buyers and sellers. Like anything else, you can learn to maximize these differences to your advantage depending on the item.